There is a scene in Bridesmaids, shortly to be released in UK cinemas, that will doubtless elicit shrieks of recognition from any woman who has ever found herself drowning in a sea of lilac tulle and sugared almonds.

The setting is an engagement party where Annie, the maid of honour for her childhood friend Lillian, has been asked to make a speech. Annie (played by Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote the script) takes to the stage, glass of champagne in hand, and makes a short, heartfelt toast. But then in a glorious show of one-upmanship, another bridesmaid grabs the microphone and delivers a moving monologue peppered with humorous anecdotes and spiritually uplifting Thai proverbs. The evening rapidly degenerates into the bridal equivalent of a hip-hop battle, with each woman hilariously trying to outdo the other in sentiment and prove they are the better friend.

"That definitely struck a chord," says Vicky Pigott, a 28-year-old solicitor who has been a bridesmaid four times (by the end of this summer, that will rise to six). "I've been at a hen do where we were all asked to stand in a line, ranking ourselves according to how close we were to the bride." Where did she place herself? She shakes her head wearily, like a battle-hardened wedding veteran. "I refused to do it. At that point, I just stood aside and said: 'No.'"

For some unmarried women there is a time in their late 20s and early 30s when being a bridesmaid becomes a rite of passage. Our daily lives can be measured in answerphone messages: the ones from female friends who have been dating the same man for 18 months or so, announcing enigmatically that they have "some news" to impart. Then there is the inevitable engagement party email, in which we are told that Stephen or Ben or Patrick proposed on the beach at midnight in Tulum, just as the Mexican solar eclipse reached its fullest point of luminescence and a flock of hummingbirds dived into the sea.

A few weeks later, when we are asked to be a bridesmaid, etiquette dictates that we grin delightedly even though a part of us is dying inside at the thought of being asked to wear chartreuse taffeta and having to sit through the screeched renditions of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" at the hen-do karaoke. At the wedding, if we are single, we will always be seated next to the designated Eligible Male. An unmarried acquaintance was once placed on a table of male trainee firemen. When she asked why, the bride replied: "Oh, but you're such a good sport, we thought you'd like to be the centre of attention."

It is these indignities that Kristen Wiig (a graduate of the Saturday Night Live skit show that produced Tina Fey and Amy Poehler), so cleverly skewers in Bridesmaids. As it happens, I am going to be a bridesmaid in August. Fortunately for me, the friend in question – Kirrily, a frighteningly successful NHS doctor – is the most un-bridezilla-ish woman you could hope to meet. There have been no competitive speech-offs in the run-up to her wedding and she has insisted that her five bridesmaids all choose their dresses.

Alas, however, not everyone is like her. When I went to a preview screening of Bridesmaids last week, accompanied by Kirrily and two of my fellow bridesmaids (Vicky and Emma), our hysterical laughter was punctuated by uneasy twinges of shared experience. It is all in there: the dress fittings at snooty bridal shops, the themed hen parties with chocolate fountains, and the social embarrassment of being a single female whom everyone assumes must be in want of a husband. "We didn't set out to make a movie for women," Wiig said in a recent interview. "We just wanted to write a comedy that has a lot of women in it."

But Bridesmaids is a different kind of female comedy. Although the subject of weddings has long been rich comic fodder for film-makers (from The Philadelphia Story to 27 Dresses), the female characters have almost always followed the conventional romantic narrative arc. According to Manohla Dargis, the chief film critic of the New York Times: "In most wedding movies, an actress may have the starring part (though not always), but it's only because her character's function is to land a man rather than to be funny."

By contrast, Wiig's movie unashamedly puts female friendship front and centre, with the male characters providing only necessary back-up (notably, Jon Hamm from Mad Men as Annie's sleazy on-off lover and Chris O'Dowd as the crumpled policeman who tries to win her heart).

"Even in this day and age, if you're not married, there are people who are like, 'Don't worry, it'll happen for you someday','" Wiig explained. "So when we were writing the movie, we were hoping to send the message that you don't have to be married to be a normal member of society."

Of course, the film – co-written by Wiig's friend Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, who made his name with television comedies such as Nurse Jackie – is not purely intended to make a socio-political point. Given that Bridesmaids is produced by Judd Apatow, the creative brains behind Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, it comes as no surprise to find the movie contains its fair share of gross-out humour, including one memorable scene where the bridal party is beset by a bout of explosive diarrhoea in the middle of a dress fitting.

In the US, the film has been hailed as women's answer to The Hangover, and has been greeted by an orgy of critical appreciation. Rolling Stone magazine declared Wiig "an indisputable goddess of comedy" and the film critic Roger Ebert was moved to call Bridesmaids "the best female-driven… comedy of all time".

But for Mumolo, the motivation was not making a self-consciously "female" film.

"We just saw it as: 'Let's have fun with the funny women we know'," she explains over the phone. "We weren't setting out on a mission. It has been touted as 'female', but with men's comedies, you don't say it's headed by an 'all-male cast' so it would be nice just to think of it as comedy, without the tag."

A lot of the acclaim is undoubtedly due to Wiig's ability to make herself sympathetic on-screen, despite her character behaving in awful ways, such as ripping apart over-sized heart-shaped cookies and doing a Hitler salute to a humourless flight attendant. Apatow says: "Kristen has this really likable personality. There are certain people – you love them, but you like seeing them abused. It might be the most important comedy quality: 'I love you, but I want to see horrible things happen to you'."

But what did my fellow bridesmaids make of the film? "I loved it," said Kirrily's sister and maid-of-honour Emma de Polnay.

"We're so used to seeing male comedies like The Hangover and I think it redressed the balance. The characters were beautifully well-defined and the gross-out stuff certainly reminded me of some of my worst hen-do experiences, like the time we went to Madame JoJos [a Soho cabaret club] and the bride was given much too much to drink so spent the entire night in the toilet puking with us each taking shifts to be with her."

For Vicky, the film managed to convey "the hyperbole of cheese" when people get married. "This doesn't apply to Kirrily," she says, "but I've often thought in the past that, in the same way people take career breaks, I slightly wish I could take a friendship break when people get engaged that would last until after their first child. Then I wouldn't have to listen to the endless wedding planning and mind-numbing baby chat."

As befits a bride-to-be, Kirrily had a more positive take and saw the film primarily as a celebration of female friendship. "For me, having bridesmaids is an excuse to express how I feel about my friends, to get together and do stuff, and in a weird way, that's what wedding and marriage is about too. Our wedding day will be two quite busy people, taking time off work, getting to turn around and say 'I love you' in front of all their friends. That's how I see it… I thought the film quite cleverly used the bridesmaids thing as a device to look into the things all women go through with friends, careers and relationships."

Personally, I found the film extremely witty, engaging, smart and a welcome riposte to the claim that women aren't capable of being as funny as men. And like all the best comedy, the jokes in Bridesmaids almost always illuminate a truth about real life. Although my own experiences of being a bridesmaid have only ever been positive (this will be my fourth time down the aisle), there was a twinge of familiarity when Wiig's character, Annie, finds out her best friend is engaged and has to adopt a rictus grin, emitting nervous laughter that turns into a borderline weeping fit. "Oh God yes," says Kirrily. "We've all been there."

The rest of us nod in agreement. Yes, we have. But now at least we can laugh about it.